A British Airways flight from Las Vegas to London was forced to land in Montreal Wednesday morning.

Sources report that after leaving Las Vegas, flight BA274 had to touch down at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport because of a bomb threat. A British Airways official who spoke to the Montreal Gazette would not confirm a bomb threat, saying the airline does not discuss operational security.

The intervention of the Montreal police department was requested at 5:15 a.m., forty minutes before the arrival of the aircraft on the runway.

Piush Patel / @illmaticpPolice on the runway in Montreal after the British Airways flight was forced to land.

There were 312 passengers and 17 crew on board the Boeing 747 when the evacuation took place. Passengers were taken by bus to the terminal as the plane was kept at a safe distance from airport buildings as a precaution.

British Airways is rebooking as many passengers as possible on other flights and airlines so they can get on their way as soon as possible. Those they cannot rebook will continue their journey on the Boeing 747 once it has been cleared by police. Hotels will also be provided to passengers if needed, the airline said.

“The safety and security of our customers, crew and aircraft are our highest priorities at all times. We are looking after the customers and will provide hotel rooms for them and will rebook them to other flights as soon as we can. We are working with the Canadian authorities and giving them our fullest support,” the airline said in a statement.

Soon after landing, specialized SPVM agents and dogs boarded the British Airways craft to investigate. As of 8:30 a.m., the police was preparing their approach to the airplane to be able to unload and search all the baggage.

The SPVM says that the evacuation was conducted peacefully, without incident or injury.

Authorities are still unaware of the origin of the threat and the Aéroports de Montréal has not yet released a statement.

A body found on a London roof may have fallen from a British Airways plane as it came in to land at Heathrow Airport following a flight from South Africa.

“We are working with the Metropolitan Police and the authorities in Johannesburg to establish the facts,” the carrier said Friday. While it said such incidents are “rare,” bodies have fallen from the sky before on the approach to Heathrow at the point where aircraft lower their wheels.

The man’s body was discovered at 9:35 a.m. on Thursday morning on the roof of a building in Richmond, a suburb on the flightpath to Europe’s busiest airport.

The Metropolitan police said in a statement on their website that there is, as yet, no link to the discovery of a stowaway on a flight into the hub from Johannesburg, though it is one line of inquiry.

The man, thought to be around 24 years old, was found at 8:30 a.m. yesterday in the undercarriage of the plane. He remains in hospital in critical condition, the police said.

Climbing up an aircraft’s landing gear is the most common way of stowing away on a plane, though it’s rare to survive as wheel bays are unpressurized and unheated, resulting in oxygen depletion and hypothermia that usually proves fatal once a flight reaches cruising altitude. Frozen bodies then fall to the ground once the undercarriage is lowered again.

LOS ANGELES — Paris Hilton’s youngest brother was charged Tuesday with interfering with a flight crew on a trip from London during which authorities say he called other passengers peasants and made children cry with his death threats and profane tirades.

Conrad Hilton, 20, wearing a dark suit and shirt buttoned to the collar, shuffled into U.S. District Court in ankle chains with his hands manacled at his waist. A judge asked if he understood his rights and the charge, which was filed Monday and could carry a prison term of up to 20 years if Hilton is convicted.

“Yes, your honour,” he repeated after each question, but he didn’t enter a plea. He was released on a $100,000 unsecured bond, ordered to appear for arraignment March 5 and told to continue mental health treatment.

Hilton’s trouble on British Airways began moments after Flight 269 left the ground July 31. It continued for almost the entire 10 1/2-hour flight, according to a 17-page affidavit by FBI agent David Gates.

Hilton ignored instructions to keep his seat belt fastened and began pacing the aisle as the aircraft ascended, the document said. He complained that another passenger was giving him the “stink eye.”

When told to return to his seat, he became unruly, and in a series of tirades, he threatened to kill several flight attendants and a co-pilot, and threatened to get them fired, the affidavit said.

“I could get you all fired in five minutes. I know your boss,” Hilton said in one of the document’s few quotes that didn’t include an expletive. “My father will pay this out, he has done it before. Dad paid $300,000 last time.”

Hilton’s parents are socialite Kathy Hilton and businessman Rick Hilton, the grandson of the Hilton hotels founder whose name was also Conrad Hilton.

Defence lawyer Robert Shapiro, a friend of the Hilton family, said he had just received the documents and would have to review them with his client before making a statement on the case.

“It may be the effects of a sleeping pill” or something else, Shapiro said outside court.

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The FBI affidavit says Hilton threw a punch inches from another flight attendant’s head that struck the bulkhead. Although the attendant, identified only by the initials O.P., said he felt threatened, he said, “I don’t believe he intentionally wanted to hurt me.”

A co-pilot who was assigned by the captain to look after Hilton noted that he appeared to be uncoordinated, delusional and paranoid.

Hilton said he was angry over the breakup with a girlfriend and wanted to smoke marijuana. At one point, he went to a lower deck restroom and the odour of pot wafted out, the affidavit said.

When confronted by the co-pilot, Hilton ran to an upper deck restroom and smoked a cigarette, the document said. A paper towel was found wadded in the smoke detector.

Hilton eventually fell asleep and was handcuffed to his seat for the remaining 90 minutes of flight.

After landing in Los Angeles, Hilton told Gates, the FBI agent, he was returning from Greece and had taken a sleeping pill in London.

According to the affidavit, Hilton acknowledged calling other passengers “peasants” and said he had would have killed one flight attendant if another passenger hadn’t calmed him down.

“A hundred per cent I would have killed him,” Hilton said.

When asked if he was serious, Hilton told Gates, “No, but I would have knocked him the (expletive) out.”

Passengers on board a British Airways flight that was forced to make an emergency landing Friday after an engine caught fire praised the pilot’s swift and calm action in bringing the plane down safely.

The airbus A319, bound for Oslo, left Heathrow shortly before 8am and was ascending to the west when passengers heard a loud “popping” and an engine caught fire.

The pilot had to divert back to the airport, taking a flight path across central London. Witnesses described seeing smoke billowing out of one of the plane’s engines.

It was the most serious incident at Heathrow since January 2008, when another British Airways flight, a Boeing 777, crash landed after both its engines failed as it approached the airport at the end of a flight from Beijing.

David Gallagher, the chief executive of a public relations company, was among the 75 passengers on board the Oslo flight. He said they realised something was wrong within 10 minutes of take-off.

“We heard this loud popping sound to one side of the plane,” he said. “I was sitting on the left and could see that the engine had blown its cover.

“People sitting on the other side realised that the same thing had happened there too.

“It was certainly rather alarming but the cabin crew remained completely calm and the captain spoke to us over the tannoy. He said he was aware there was an issue and would be running some tests but that things were fine.

“Then we realised that the right engine was on fire, there was lots of smoke. It triggered a lot of anxiety, there were a few people who were very upset. The plane was about three quarters full, so the people sitting near the engine moved away.”

Mr Gallagher, who had been on his way to Norway for a business meeting, said the crew was “fantastic” and unflappable, despite the growing panic.

“The captain came back on and said we would be returning to London. He said it might be a tough landing but it wasn’t at all. It was completely smooth.

“The emergency evacuation was exactly like they say it will be in the safety demo. We were brought off the plane very quickly and came down the slides.”

He added: “You never think you’ll have to do that, it was pretty scary. I could see that the engine was still on fire. We were only in the air for 20 minutes but it felt like an hour.”

Steve Parsons / AP The right hand (starboard) engine of the British Airways plane after it had to make an emergency landing at Heathrow airport, early Friday, May 24, 2013. Footage broadcast on British television shows the plane in the air with smoke streaming from this engine. Both runways at Heathrow airport were temporarily closed.

Onlookers on the ground spoke of their fear at seeing an aircraft above them with its engine on fire.

Clive Cook, who lives under the flight path, said: “This plane was coming over and suddenly the tone of the engine changed dramatically.” He said it sounded almost like “a blowout, or an explosion”.

“I’m absolutely certain that as it came through the clouds, and I looked up, the right engine was on fire, it wasn’t smoking, it was actually on fire.”

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch began an inquiry into the incident that will try to determine why the casings on the engines came off and why the right engine caught fire.

Some experts suggested that one of the engines may have suffered a bird strike. Others believe that the inquiry will focus on the maintenance of the aircraft, which is understood to have undergone its weekly inspection in the hours before it took off for the flight to Oslo.

AP Photo/Metropolitan PoliceBritish police released this composite image of a mystery man who fell from a passenger jet back in December. He has now been identified as Jose Matada from Mozambique.

LONDON — British police say they have finally identified a man whose body was found on a suburban London street in September after falling from the undercarriage of a plane as it prepared to land at Heathrow Airport.

Police identified the man Thursday as Jose Matada from Mozambique.

Police initially believed the man was from Ghana because he was found with currency from that country in his jeans and because a jet from Ghana was overhead shortly before his crumpled body was found in the suburb of Mortlake.

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He had no identification papers at the time, and was wearing jeans, white sneakers and a gray sweatshirt when he was found. Matada’s body was also marked with a tattoo of the letters “Z” and “G” inked on his upper arm.

Police eventually determined his identity by calling numbers found on a SIM card he was carrying. But efforts to locate his next of kin have failed so far. Police are still holding the body for repatriation.

LONDON — British Airways says a body has been found in a passenger plane that landed at London’s Heathrow Airport after a flight from Cape Town, South Africa.

The airline says a man’s body was found Thursday inside the landing gear bay of a Boeing 747 at the end of a flight from Cape Town.

“This is a very rare and sad event and our thoughts are with the individual’s family,” the BBC reported a BA spokesperson saying.

BA says it is working with South African authorities and Cape Town’s airport and investigating how the incident took place.

London police said the dead man was not a crew member or passenger on the flight and the death is not being treated as suspicious.

It said it is working to determine the man’s identity.

It is thought the man could have been a person who was spotted scaling a fence near the Cape Town International Airport on Wednesday night, the BBC reports.

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), which runs the Cape Town airport, has said that it is carrying out an investigation.

“Last night at approximately 8:40 pm [local time] a person was detected scaling the perimeter fence at Cape Town International Airport (CTIA),” The Daily Mail reported a ACSA spokesperson as saying.

The Associated Press with files from National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/british-airways-stowaway/feed0stdA British Airways (BA) Boeing 747 passenger aircraft taxis at Heathrow Airport in west London April 7, 2011. A body of a man was found inside the landing gears of a plane similar to this one.